And lean it is. Hendrick's IT group of 13 people serves all of its 7,000 employees at 75 car dealerships across the U.S., which includes people in sales, accounting, service technicians and the auto parts department. (Hendrick is the seventh largest Automotive Group in the U.S. and sells every kind of car except Ford).

"We're running a multi-billion dollar a year company with 13 IT people. You can't get much more trim than that," says Robert Taylor, Hendrick's Director of IT.

A Microsoft shop, Hendrick has been running all its Office 2007 email, collaboration and productivity apps on-premise (Exchange, SharePoint and OCS). Of its 7,000 employees, 4,500 of them are on the corporate network at any given time, and as the Hendrick dealerships have grown over the past few years, an on-prem model began to stunt IT's ability to help the company grow.